Voicemail has become ubiquitous. These voicemail systems allow users to store incoming messages and retrieve them at their convenience. Nearly all voicemail systems have one or more methods of notifying the user that a new message has been left. This is referred to in the art as a “message waiting indicator”.
Oftentimes, these message waiting indicators are tied to a specific physical telephone. For example, for a voice mailbox that is provided by the local telephone company on a residential line, the message waiting indicator is often a “stutter tone” that is placed on the dial tone upon picking up a telephone in the residence. In a business that uses a private branch exchange (PBX) voicemail system, it is more common for the telephone assigned to that particular user in his office to have a light that indicates that a message is waiting. In either case, the message waiting indicator is tied to a particular phone or incoming line.
However, in organizations that have multiple sites that are commonly tied together by a common phone system, the user may be off-site visiting another location within the organization. In such a situation, important messages that are left in the “home” voice mailbox of the user may go unnoticed unless there is some method of notifying the user that a new message has been left.
Prior art attempts to notify the user include outdialing to a pager or other service when a message has been left. However, this method is disruptive and relatively complicated. Additionally, this requires the user have a paging service or other service that will notify the user of a new message.
Alternatively, a guest voice mailbox could be set up for the user at the remote location. However, this requires some sort of action from the system administrator to set up passwords and the like.
Lastly, the user could simply poll their mailbox frequently to determine if new messages have been left. However, this may prove to be inconvenient and costly if the remote location is distant from the home location of the user.
Thus, what is needed is a method to notify a user at a remote location that a new message has been left in the user's mailbox.